Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann Leaves for South Korea

23 April 2013

Shwe Mann, the speaker of Burma’s Lower House of Parliament and a high-ranking member of the previous military regime, is traveling to South Korea with a delegation of Burmese lawmakers, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported on Tuesday. Shwe Mann, a former general whose visit to North Korea in 2008 raised speculation of a prohibited arms cooperation, left Rangoon on Monday at the invitation of Kang Chang-hee, speaker of South Korea’s legislature. He was accompanied by the Lower House’s deputy speaker and other top lawmakers, although the state-run newspaper did not report on the purpose of their visit.